Dear BBC Iplayer..

[zac510]

..
Subtitles are next to useless if they are not in sync.

They're so bad they might aswell not even bother with them!

[Randy Winkman]

Since the BBC iPlayer site pages changed, it's all jerky when I watch it and the speech is out of synch. Anyone know why?

[FourWheelDrift]

Maybe they updated their player software, have you tried updating Flash on your PC?

Edited to add, are you trying to watch BBC HD on a PC that can't handle it?

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Monday 20th September 21:36

[zac510]

Sounds like a CPU problem Randy but very hard to tell from just the description alone. It could be any number of things really.

My problem is not a new one. A bit of googling has shown that they even confess it's a problem. I've certainly been experiencing it for the whole time that iplayer has had subtitles.

[Randy Winkman]

FourWheelDrift said:

Maybe they updated their player software, have you tried updating Flash on your PC?

Edited to add, are you trying to watch BBC HD on a PC that can't handle it?

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Monday 20th September 21:36

Are you suggesting my computer's no good?

[ninja-lewis]

Sometimes the fault lies with the subtitles themselves - they're usually taken straightoff the playout system so if they're wrong on TV, they're wrong on iPlayer too. When I've downloaded the subtitle xml, they occasionally require manual tweaking.

However, the new site seems to be slower at making them available, if at all.

[zac510]

Holy st, I didn't realise the subtitles came in via XML!

Just looking at the response content now.

I've just had an idea.....

[ninja-lewis]

zac510 said:

Holy st, I didn't realise the subtitles came in via XML!

Just looking at the response content now.

I've just had an idea.....

If you're thinking about accessing them, it's already been done. Channel 4 use a similar format called .smi.

[zac510]

Maybe you can point me towards some resources then?

I was just going to write a firefox extension to resync the time in the XML file to the user's spec before the iplayer draws it the subtitles. I've done similar code before. I think it should work.

[ninja-lewis]

zac510 said:

Maybe you can point me towards some resources then?

I was just going to write a firefox extension to resync the time in the XML file to the user's spec before the iplayer draws it the subtitles. I've done similar code before. I think it should work.

YHM.